Flags, Fine Motor and Focus

For this week's craft we made a flag for the Fourth of July.

I loosely drew an outline of a flag on a piece of white construction paper.  I say loosely, because it only has 12 stripes.  I wasn't invested enough to do the math to figure out how 13 stripes would fit evenly.  Flame if you must. ;)

Olivia helped me squirt glue all over the square.  Then she started putting little blue pieces of construction paper on it.

She actually did much better than I thought.  I was going to have her use paint and put some white finger prints for the stars, but just enough white was peaking out through the blue squares that I decided to leave it as is.

I put a line of glue on the first row and she started putting on the red pieces.

I figured we'd kill two birds with one stone and do an art project while practicing her fine motor skills.

I was honestly a little worried once I saw the stripes.  I thought that it might be too much for her.  I anticipated having to do this project over two sessions, or me having to help her quite a bit.

But it was the exact opposite.  She did great, and actually wanted to do more once it was finished.  She kept saying how good of a job she was doing, that Boppa would love it, and when I told her I was proud of her she responded with "I'm proud of myself too!" :)

The finished product!  It only took her about 10 minutes to do the whole thing.

Proudly hanging on our fridge with the rest of her art work.

Since she finished the project rather quickly, she wanted to keep creating.  I offered her a color wonder book that she got for her birthday.

It came with five markers.  She colored one color on each page until the entire page was covered.

I literally had to stop her after page 5.  It was past time to eat lunch.  She colored for a full hour!  Focus and attention span are not issues we have to deal with! :)  She would have kept going if I had let her.  I'm sure it was great for strengthening her hand muscles too! 

The first thing she did after rest time was ask to color.  She sat for another TWO HOURS and finished the book.  I kept telling her she didn't need to finish the book in one day, but she insisted that she did.  I know what I'm taking on our next long car drive!